


Levity

by alesca_munroe



Series: Control [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Humor, Original Character(s), this is why felix can't have nice things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 08:50:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2263428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alesca_munroe/pseuds/alesca_munroe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“My mother never warned me there’d be days like these."<br/>“It wouldn’t have mattered even if she had.  You never listen to your mother.”<br/>“I’m forty-eight and she still tells me I need to eat more vegetables.”</p><p> </p><p>Or, this is what happened when I reread the series summary and it sounded humorous instead of grim.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Levity

**Author's Note:**

> There are good days, and there are bad days, and then there is the day Felix is having.

“Don’t even say it,” Felix warns when his door opens. He doesn’t even bother looking up from his list because the effort is not worth seeing Max’s attempt at hiding a smug grin. People think Max doesn’t emote. Most people also haven’t had to go on undercover ops requiring total silence with him either.

“I haven’t even said anything,” Max replies. He settles at his place in the corner behind Felix’s desk, a space he has carved out for himself despite having his own office across the hall.

“You were thinking it.”

“And here I was, thinking the CIA’s psychic project had failed.”

“And now you’re making jokes. The trainees would wonder if you were replaced by an alien.”

“The trainees need to come up with more plausible theories if that’s the best they’ve got.”

Felix sighs and throws his list on his desk. “My mother never warned me there’d be days like these,” he says almost plaintively.

Max snorts because he has not now nor ever had any sympathy for Felix, and also because the trainees and most of the regular staff would never believe Felix Knight was capable of whining. “It wouldn’t have mattered even if she had,” he points out. “You never listen to your mother.”

“I’m forty-eight and she still tells me I need to eat more vegetables.”

“Nancy’s not wrong.” Max knew Felix back when he subsisted on a diet of cigarettes and French table wine. Felix gave up the cigarettes because the smell of smoke on his clothes made spying impossible in all but the seediest places (which, to be fair, was his place of business for five years) and the table wine unless he feels like reminiscing and cursing Liz’s name. Felix eats real food now, but an appalling lack of vegetables. “You’re Filipino. Don’t you just mix it in with whatever else you’re eating?”

Felix makes a note on his list to make Max give cultural and equal opportunity training this month. And maybe next month too because the high-caliber agents and handlers he hand-picked are shamelessly uncouth. “I’d almost rather discuss what you’re gloating over.”

“Really?” Max shifts behind Felix and leans on the back of his chair. “You really want to talk about how Ethuil went off-script for the mission to the point of throwing her earpiece into the bay instead of actually listening to what Jonathan, _as her handler_ , was telling her to do? Or do you want to talk about the part where Jonathan left his control room to _drive fourteen hours_ to where Ethuil was in the middle of seducing the mark and go in raging at her so the mark thought Jonathan was her husband despite the fact that Jonathan wasn’t even talking in any sort of code? Then there’s the hotel they _burned down_ in the ensuing fistfight-”

“I’d like to talk about the part where Felix is about to put a knife through your eye,” Oliver volunteers from the doorway. He is as neatly dressed as always, as though he didn’t have to drive out to pick up Jonathan and Ethuil and bring them back himself. It’s frankly impossible for someone who’s been up and active for forty-six hours to look that put together. Then again, Oliver makes a point to prove that wrong on a regular basis. He grins. It isn’t particularly reassuring expression. “Or the part where I saved the day.”

“You’re not even a field agent, why were you even out of the building,” Felix sighs but it’s not really a question. He knows Oliver has the motor pool wrapped around his fingers. And the armory. And he has lunch with Nancy twice a week, which is what Felix gets for putting his own mother in charge of medical. Oliver could get away with murder in a building full of former military spies and assassins and most of them _don’t even know what it is he does there._

Oliver snorts. “Lisa called me from the control room when Jonathan stormed out. I would have stopped him from even leaving but his watch team was rudderless. Besides, he and Ethuil occasionally need to vent their frustrations.”

“They burned down a Hilton,” Max points out. He and Oliver have never gotten along. Felix doesn’t particularly care so long as work still gets done. Mostly it does. And then there are the days when Felix gets to be the one to mop up the blood in the top-floor gym.

Oliver just gives him a snooty look like they don’t know he used to be a Marine. “Shoddy construction.”

“Are you actually here for anything important?” Felix cuts in because Oliver and Max can honestly do this all day. Two stakeouts are on tape as evidence.

“Nancy let Jonathan and Ethuil out of Medical,” Oliver replies. He does Felix the courtesy of pretending he doesn’t know Nancy is Felix’s mother. Felix is very glad that fact isn’t common knowledge. There are sixteen rumors and a betting pool about his past, and three of them involve childhood tragedy. None of them suspect his childhood was fairly uneventful except for the part where his mother was an assassin. “They’re in the gym.”

“I just replaced those windows,” Felix grumbles and wishes he was still a chainsmoker.

Oliver’s mouth twists. “Not that gym.”

Felix sighs and gets up. “There’s still that betting pool for whenever they go at it?”

“I made your usual bet,” Oliver confirms.

Felix waves him out the door and Oliver goes. “At least one of them is a good investment,” Felix says as he heads for the stairs.

Max scoffs. “You know he got to the hotel _before_ they lit it on fire, right?”

Felix wishes he never met any of them.

 


End file.
